


Twenty Thousand Leagues Through Space

by InsertSthMeaningful



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Artificial Intelligence, Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, Erik Lehnsherr Defense Squad, Erik Lehnsherr is not a Happy Bunny, Isolation, M/M, references to pop culture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26426767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful
Summary: When Erik wakes up in a spaceship bound for a planet outside the solar system - alone, hungover and very much at a loss what to do next - he certainly doesn't expect to make friends with the quirky on-board AI.And what he's even less prepared for is said friendship slowly blossoming into more.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 19
Kudos: 28
Collections: 2020 Cherik Bang





	1. The Merula Is Not the Titanic

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my Cherik Big Bang fic and it's still pretty much a WIP since uni has taken over my life.  
> Many thanks to the ones who organised this event, to [FlightInFlame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/pseuds/flightinflame) for the beta and [mayhem](https://muddled-mayhem.tumblr.com/) for the art which I will link to as soon as I have, well, a link to link.
> 
> In case of confusion, the ship's name is based on the latin name of a species of blackbird (someone in the [X-Men X-Traordinaire server (18+)](https://discord.gg/wqkPMEr) came up with that idea).

The first thing Erik saw when he woke up were the stars.

He blinked. The stars remained, hung in place over his head as if by an invisible giant hand. He was not dreaming.

If anything, he was very much awake – and weightless, floating just below the bull’s eye of a space ship.

“Scheisse.” He twisted, tried to get a hold of the window’s frame, a footrest let into the inner hull nearby, anything really to keep him tethered. His head ached as a mini-supernova went off behind his eyelids at the sudden movement, and his tongue was dry and rough like sandpaper. Apparently, he was also hungover.

He groaned, dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, and when he felt like he could see again without his eyeballs screeching in pain as though they were being spooned out of their sockets, he reached out – with his powers this time, the aluminum in the ship’s metal-and-ceramic alloy weakly calling for him – and tried to get a good, solid grip to pull himself towards it.

He failed. Again he tried, went for a bulky mass of steel this time, the one he could sense looming behind his back, possibly some kind of agricultural engine (who the fuck wanted to go farming in space anyway?). Failed again.

Like fine-grained sand through fingers, his awareness of the metal alloys slipped anytime he tried to manipulate its magnetic field. He had only experienced this once before in his life, when he had punched a mutantphobic bigot and ended up in an off-Earth holding cell for eleven hours before his sister had bailed him. _Genetic blockers_.

But this was not a holding cell. This was not a police station, flitting along on a narrowly prescribed orbit around Earth, or Erik’s sleeping quarters just below the quieter port of the Xavier Corporations’ off-Earth shipyard docks.

This was one solitary, single spacecraft, and when Erik turned his attention to the outsides – the cool, quiet empty of space – he found there were no others for as far as he could feel.

Gottverdammt nochmal. Where _was_ he? Where– And why had he been cut off from using his powers? How had he–

He bumped against a ladder leading up to a hermetically closed door and held on tightly. Right. Concentrate, you idiot.

He let his powers unfold. Space ship. About twice as long as your ordinary inter-planetary passenger vessel, with fuel tanks taking up eighty percent of its volume, and he found he wasn’t even that far from where the bridge’s electrics sparked into the dark of space, just beyond what he supposed were the living quarters. A storage space, then – no wonder there were active mutation blockers in place, seeing as some mutants truly had abilities unsuited to space travel.

But why was he in a space ship’s unlit cargo bay? How had he gotten there?

Why was he _alone_ in space?

The communication pad by the door connecting the bay to the rest of the habitable rooms of the ship crackled, and then an impassioned computer’s voice – rather more male than female, but with space technology you could never tell – said, “Identification, please.”

Erik drew a deep breath into his lungs, closed his eyes. Opened them again when he exhaled and willed his fingers to not grip the ladder (aluminum, fortified with a ceramic skeleton, up to the newest space innovations) quite so tightly.

“Identification, please,” came the voice again, and this time Erik thought he could make out a certain undercurrent of impatience.

“I,” he breathed, “am doing my _damnedest_ to not fly into a full-on panic attack right now. Can this maybe wait a little?”

Silence.

Then, “Of course. Would you mind some music while we wait?”

And before he could protest, Erik’s ears were assaulted with the most brain-churning elevator tune he had ever encountered (and he had encountered his fair share of pathetic elevator music before, at Xavier Corps, during his short employment by Trask, even once or twice at Stark Industries). Saxophones, the flute and– was that a triangle?

He thought that never before in his life had he caved as quickly.

“Alright, alright,” he groaned and pressed his forehead against the grounding cool of the ladder’s aluminum, “name: Erik Lehnsherr; current work-stationing: engineer 3 in sector 7C; matriculation number: M4GN370. Will this be enough?”

“Quite.” A few seconds of blessed silence. “You haven’t by any chance been sent along by Xavier Corporations to supervise and record my conduct during this mission?”

Well, this was new. On-board AIs usually automated all on their own.

“Uh, no?” Erik asked more than said.

The panel by the door flickered as though in confusion. “Do you even know where you are?”

Now this Erik needn’t be asked twice. “No,” he said very firmly, “I haven’t the slightest.”

He could virtually _taste_ the computer’s resignation. Somewhere in the bowels of the ship, an apparatus started churning away, possibly to pump fresh oxygen through the cargo bay.

Erik waited. In the back of his head, he could feel the beginnings of what had been a minor panic attack congregating into an existential crisis.

“So you’re a stow-away,” the voice finally stated. “And a rather unwitting one at that. Oh dear.”

“Did you just get a British accent?” Erik ground out exasperatedly.

“You don’t see me say no, do you? Then again, you don’t see me at all.” A sound that might have been a chuckle had it not been generated by an artificial intelligence floated through the zero-gravity air. Erik at least didn’t think there was anything to laugh at. “Since you’re no one who will report any misbehaviours back to the programming desk, allow me to introduce myself: I’m the seventh iteration of the Cerebro Think Cycle – very fancy name for a simple AI, I know – invented and copyrighted by none other than Brian Xavier of Xavier Corporations. My designate is CF1307, but you may call me Charles.”

 _Think Cycle_ – the name rang a very small and _very_ unwelcome bell somewhere in Erik’s head.

His palms were sweaty. He tightened his grip on the aluminum ladder and hooked a foot under its frame to keep himself from drifting off.

“You’re not one of the AIs Xavier Corps uses in space crafts for inter-planetary travel,” he said, very slowly. “And AIs usually aren’t autonomous enough to give themselves a name. Or have a British accent.”

“All quite correct. I see, you’re a smart one.”

Erik was pretty sure that if the AI – _Charles –_ had had a face, it would have smiled at him in delight, not unlike a scientist would have smiled at a chimpanzee who had just solved a puzzle. He ignored it.

“High-end intelligence programs like you are usually sold to private investors – the kind who wants to go beyond the solar system and colonize other planets.” He exhaled, mindful of his next words. “ _Interstellar_ travel.”

“Yes! Excellent, my friend,” fizzled the panel, and now Erik was a hundred per cent positive that he wasn’t just imagining the space vessel’s life-sustaining hydraulics starting up beyond the bay door. “And what does that tell you about the space craft you are currently stranded in?”

Erik swallowed. His throat was very dry.

“This is a colonization mission,” he murmured, “and that means I’m currently the only soul awake aboard. I’m stuck.”

“Well, that’s one way to put i–”

“How far are we from Earth?” Erik asked. “What’s the life support situation aboard? Do you have reserves – or maybe evac vessels?”

“Wouldn’t it be more conductive to first evaluate the why and when of how you came to be aboard?” weaseled the voice – _Charles_. Erik thought there was a rather suspicious note of evasion to his tone.

“I don’t– I don’t remember.” Erik pinched the bridge of his nose, then looked down at his rumpled jeans and sweat-stained shirt under his canvas jacket. “Or wait, yes, I _do_ remember. Ach, Scheisse. Raven’s stag night.”

If the panel in the wall had been mobile, it probably would have leaned forward in unfeigned interest – or gripped its cup of tea tighter. “Yes?”

“We went out drinking – she’s one of my best friends, and, like, she and her girlfriend finally scraped enough money together to get married – we got drunk, and Azazel and Victor made a bet...”

“Oh, lovely.”

Erik gave the disembodied voice the most vexed look he could manage and said, “No. Because that bet involved ‘porting me onto the nearest space ship and seeing if I could make it out before it took off. Which I didn’t, because I passed out.”

“Oh dear.” Green and red flitted over the panel, distraught. “And your friends didn’t think of retrieving you before I set off.”

“They probably forgot.” Erik sighed. “Now, can you maybe open that door? I’ll just use your command center quickly to send an SOS to–”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

“ _What_?”

“We don’t carry long-range communication devices aboard this ship.”

“You don’t–” Erik spluttered. “Impossible. All regular space crafts are equipped with radio to feed into the DSN so they meet off-Earth travel requirements.”

“But this,” Charles said, “is not a regular space craft. We are on our way out of the system, to an exoplanet which circles another _sun_ , Erik. We won’t need rescuing, and if we do, it wouldn’t be worth it anyway, because we would be so far out that all help would come too late.”

 _Where’s the logic behind that?_ “But if there were to be an emergency while still in the sol system–”

“The _Merula_ is built to withstand, to function flawlessly – like the Titanic, just without the shipwreck bit. There is a mere 0.000001 probability that she might suffer severe damage while still in the solar system.” The voice made a meaningful pause. “Also, the organisation which commissioned her has a penchant for secrecy… which is why I would have been very surprised if Xavier Corporations had smuggled you on board to check on my conduct.”

Erik ground his teeth. “Then whoever commissioned you,” he growled, “is a goddamned idiot. Who was it?”

“As I said: _secrecy_ ,” murmured the AI, and then the door’s mechanism twitched and unlocked.

Erik pulled himself up the ladder’s rungs and stopped just short of the hatch. “Can I…?”

“You may pass.” An unseen smile tinted Charles’ voice soft and yellow. “We don’t want you to freeze to death in here, and my scans show you’re dehydrated. Go ahead to the mission module – I’ll see if I can put you up with some gs, and then we’ll look around for some nourishment.”

Really, Erik didn’t have to be told twice. With a movement he thought felt somewhat final, he drew the bay door open and pulled himself through the man-sized opening into the deep, dark bowels of the _Merula_.

On the first few meters, there was only silence and absolute darkness.

Erik made himself take deep, steady breaths. At least he wasn’t totally blinded – his sense of magnetic fields showed him a more than accurate map of the cataract he was pulling himself through, so he didn’t bump into any overhanging mission gear which wasn’t stowed away properly or strapped down firmly. But soon, the dark became smothering.

In the cargo bay, he had at least been able to make out some vague contours in the cold light of the stars and Charles’ communication pad. In here, it felt as though he was being lowered into the confines of a muddy grave.

And then those damn blockers. He grunted, frustrated that he had to use his hands to move instead of just coasting along on whatever magnetic fields he could meld with his senses. Goosebumps were springing up on his arms, and he thought he could virtually _feel_ the X-gene-disabling waves temporarily denaturating his DNA.

Electricity started coursing through wires in front of him, and then the lights flickered on.

“Was zum...”

Cryotubes. Rows upon rows of cryotubes, suspended from what would have been the ceiling of the ship if it hadn’t been for zero gravity. And all were occupied.

Erik deviated from his current forward movement to pass by a few of the hypersleep-cells in close proximity. Adults, teenagers, even a few children – all sound asleep, trapped in dreamless stasis. Erik tapped against a glass pane behind which he thought he could make out the closed eyes and pinched lips of a young woman – he had only ever seen cryotubes up close at conventions he had visited for work reasons, and then they hadn’t even been functional and he had had to hurry, no time for such a petty little thing as scientific curiosity – and only drew back when there came the artificial sound of a throat being cleared from a nearby speaker.

“I don’t believe you could do any real damage, Erik,” said Charles chidingly, “but I would be very much comfortable if you left them in peace.”

Erik huffed, but set off again towards where his metal senses told him the main module was. “Who are they?” he asked and questioningly eyed a blinking camera in passing.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not possible. You control the vessel, you should know what is where.” Erik came to another hatch which separated the room with the cryotubes from the crew’s future sleeping quarters. Impatiently, he waited for the on-board AI to unlock it, sneaking the occasional glance back over his shoulder. “Hey. That one’s a mutant.”

He could make out green, scaly skin behind fogged glass, an unnatural golden shimmer to the sleeper’s flesh. And when he looked more closely, he became aware of other physically mutated individuals: horns curling in a soft bed of auburn locks, like those of a ram; a young man with a shock of bright red hair which seemed to curl and writhe lazily like a pit of dozing snakes; a woman, so broad and solid she almost seemed to burst out of her hypersleep-cell.

The goosebumps on his arms returned.

“Yes, they do indeed posses the X-gene, every single one of them. Or rather, X _-genes_. Please, go ahead.” The door in front of Erik unlocked with an inviting _clack_ , and he let himself be ushered through by the velvet voice. “Did you know that an individuals mutation is determined by several genetic markers distributed over several chromosomes? It’s all highly interesting. It has even been proven that some mutations depend on an individual’s sex, for example when said mutation is triggered by genetic coding that can only be present on the Y-chromosome.”

“Yeah. Very interesting,” Erik murmured and pushed himself off the wall to glide by some closed doors and several unlit sleeping cots, empty save for a securely strapped-down set of gray pillow and covers. He had been keeping up with mutant-related articles regularly ever since he could read, so those weren’t exactly news to him.

As though he had just read his mind, Charles prattled on, “Of course, you should be well-informed about that as a metallokinetic yourself, as my scans have shown. In fact, yours is one of the most complex variations of telekinesis–”

Erik groaned, more than happy to feel out the main mission module’s machinery circuits behind the next hatch. Soon, he would be able to find a way off this goddamned interstellar space craft. “You’re very talkative, you know?”

“Oh, but it has distracted you from your – and I quote – _full-on panic attack_ , hasn’t it?” the ship’s AI shot back smugly.

The last door’s lock slid back with an almost inaudible sigh. Feeling equally consternated, Erik turned to the nearest surveillance camera and glared.

He could recognize that he had just been played by a computer. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.

The temperature inside the mission module was indeed more suited to Erik’s human body.

Rubbing the last goosebumps on his arms away, he glided through the hatch and didn’t even flinch when it slid closed right behind him. Then, he took a look around.

Of course, he had found himself in an interstellar spacecraft more than once in the past – repairing this, installing that, and just overall making sure that nothing would fall apart half-way out of the sol system. But there had been no life in the machinery then, no talking, disembodied presence watching him through the cameras and gathering various data on his bio-functions through scanners and sensors. If he hadn’t been raised by his mother to be such a brave boy, he would have felt just a little afraid.

“Please, make yourself comfortable” came the board computer’s voice, tinged with artificial warmth. “There are some seats with belts to your left over there, by the steering console. Just strap yourself down and I’ll have a go at putting the gravity system into motion. We don’t want you knocking a dent into your pretty head.”

Erik hesitated, graciously ignoring that last remark – one other thing was different from all the other vessels’ command bridges he had seen at work. The floor was… curved. Both to his left and right, it sloped upwards until it seemed to become the ceiling, except that machinery and sleeping berths were aligned to it as though it was still, well, _floor_. A normal corridor, but in doughnut-shape – unimaginable and impracticable by Earth physic standards.

Then again, they were nowhere near Earth. This was space, and such a fickle law as gravity held no power here.

The mission module was a centrifuge.

“Exceptional,” Erik breathed, unable to take his eyes off the – honestly surprisingly clever – layout of the room as he pulled and pushed himself towards the seats Charles had indicated. “I’ve read heaps of theoretical banter about spaceships constructed to sustain their crew with actual microgravity, but this– It’s simply never been done before because we thought the energy expense would be too great.”

“As I said, the _Merula_ is a wonder of advanced technology.” The controls in front of Erik flickered welcoming as he took place in one of the padded chairs, automatically reached out for the aluminum buckles with his powers and scowled when they wouldn’t comply and he had to go fishing for them by hand. No sooner had he secured himself than a slight whirring sound started up somewhere behind his back and he could feel machinery situated somewhere just below the vessel’s hull begin to grind out a slow but persistent pace.

“We’re off to a good start, my friend,” Charles said. “All is functioning seamlessly – considering the sheer innovation put into this ship, this is of course hardly surprising. You’ll be pinned down onto solid ground by our centrifugal force in no time.”

Erik did not answer. He was far too busy feeling the purr of the mechanical components against his fingertips, against his metal-sense, quite like a sports car’s well-oiled engine. Outside, beyond the thick glass pane giving view onto what lay in front of the _Merula_ , the stars were starting to move sideways and up. The spacecraft was spinning.

Erik felt it when gravity began to kick in. His stomach lurched downwards and his heart-beat picked up in strength. A tingling sensation coursed through his feet – his blood flow righting itself.

Barely a minute after the gravity assist had taken up its work, he was able to unbuckle his seat belt and get up, taking his first actual steps in space. He tried not to think too much about how his ceiling was also his floor, but otherwise there was nothing to complain about.

Then, the first thing he did was ignore Charles when the AI advised him to go pick up some nutrients at the kitchen bay to his right. Instead, he leaned forward to riffle through the holographic console options until he came to the com section – or at least to the gap where in all other space crafts the com section was indexed.

“There _has_ to be a transmitter of some kind, though,” he muttered, flicking back and forth through the holograms hovering over the shiny buttons, screens and panels of the steering console. Maybe he had simply missed what he was looking for?

“Lying, I’m afraid, is not one of my strengths,” the board computer’s voice cut through Erik’s stunned silence. “You can try to seek out the circuits of communication devices with your powers, but I can assure you that you will find nothing.”

Well, Erik didn’t have to be told twice. Carefully so as to not flip any important switches or press any red buttons, he put his palms against the steering console, spread his fingers and _searched_.

Circuits. Copper and gold and rare earths, coiled neatly in their aluminum shells like snails. Navigation, internal communication, measurements, electric data flow – and none of them welcome and inviting to his touch in the way radio wave transmitters were.

“Spare parts,” he gasped. “You must have radio spare parts somewhere, to build–”

“I’m afraid access to those particular storage chambers is denied to me.”

“Escape pods then!” Erik clamped down on the trembling in his knees, the desperation leaking into his voice – to no avail. “This ship _must_ have escape pods installed somewhere, or some kind of shuttle. Several even, if you want to get down onto that planet without taking the whole ship apart. I can get in one of those, it doesn’t even need steering, there’s enough traffic out here that I’ll be picked up in no time.”

The AI’s silence was more telling than any apologizing glance, any uttered negation could have been. Erik gripped the smooth back of the pilot chair in front of him, knuckles white, and let the utterly chilling, petrifying realization wash over him as his knees gave way. He was not getting off this ship. He had no way to leave.

Outside, in the cruelly endless dark of space, the stars shone – they didn’t glitter, mind you. Stars never glitter outside the safety of Earth’s atmosphere.

Erik was trapped.


	2. Open the Pod Bay Doors, Please, Charles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for Charles to step into the spotlight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dat moment when you post your last pre-written words because 1) you're terribly good at procrastination 2) you'd rather fill a few X-Men Kink Meme prompts.  
> The title's (mostly) from 2001 - A Space Odyssey (first and third act are terrible, but the one in-between is decent).

One million, hundred-and-nineteen-thousand and seven-hundred-thirteen kilometres – or about 0.0075 astronomical units – after the _Merula_ ’s dispatch from Xavier Corporation’s Dock for Interstellar Travel in Earth’s orbit, CF1307 discovered that the unidentified mutant individual in storage room 3B had woken up.

Sensible questioning heeded the man’s name, profession and the rather human circumstances explaining his presence on the interstellar space vessel. He was called Erik – and somewhere in the bustling data cluster making up CF1307’s entire being, a small voice told him that this human being would be oh-so different from all the others he had ever encountered.

Charles thought – well, he didn’t think per se, but his data flows all congregated towards a common result concerning the whole living-breathing-stowaway situation, as they had when he had decided on a human-sounding name to assuage the man’s panic attack – Charles thought he was doing a rather adept job at settling Erik into a comfortable life on board the _Merula_. After all, when it came down to surviving, humans were simple organisms, and Charles knew their needs and how to provide them. Humans needed air. They needed water. They needed food and warmth and a place to sleep.

And most of all, they needed distraction.

“We could pass inhabited planets on our way out of the system, though. Or colonised moons, or maybe a few stragglers on a backwater asteroid.” Erik’s voice resounded as a flurry of nervous data strings, pulled from the microphones dispersed all around the space ship’s command desk. Charles’ body scans showed an accelerated heart-rate as well as elevated sweat output.

He pulled up his directives and came away with what he had already suspected. “I’m sorry to tell you that any communication with external sources would violate this mission’s security protocol. I have no allowance to enable it.”

A new avalanche of shivers ran down the mutant’s body. His powers – intrinsically woven strands of magnetic manipulation – were straining against the blockers, but they resisted easily. Still, Charles made a note to relay 15% more electrical power into their system, just to be safe.

“A cryochamber, then,” croaked Erik. “You must have a spare one of those, so I don’t have to be awake the whole damn time this journey takes.”

Charles rifled through his archives of human facial traits and what they could convey, pulled up a combination which closely resembled Erik’s current mimic – dilated pupils, knitted eyebrows, slack jaw etc. – and noted the result: _fear_.

They had no _spare_ cryochamber on board. At least not one Charles was sure Erik should use.

Distraction it was, then.

“Do you have any special dietary requirements?” Charles sent through one of the speakers in Erik’s immediate vicinity, careful not to drop the warm quality and British accent to his voice – he would have to put them as default for the length of Erik’s stay. “Allergies, diets influenced by religion, limited by personal choices… Of course, our food storage is not overly extensive, but it should be able to provide for some variety, even if you turn out to have a few foods you can’t or won’t eat.”

“I… I’m Jewish,” came the dazed reply.

“Oh, how interesting! So you keep kosher?” Very pointedly, Charles made a green light ping up over the serving counter eleven-and-a-half feet to Erik’s right. “And please, go pick up your water ration. Human bodies are composed of about up to 60% of water, and you, my friend, seem to not have kept hydrated over the last twelve hours.”

“Um.” Though Charles was satisfied to see the mutant shake himself out of his stupor and comply, he could not help but know his expression of stubborn hesitance for what it was when Erik shuffled over to the counter before downing the flask of water in one go. Then, he looked up, wiping his mouth on his canvas jacket’s sleeve, sought out one of Charles’ camera eyes and said, “Thank you. And I rarely keep kosher – my mother raised me to know when resources are too sparse to obey the will of a God who has abandoned us.”

If Charles had had eyebrows to raise, he _would_ have raised them. It assimilated surprise in another human being’s eyes, or so he had learned.

“Well, I can assure you that there is really no limit to what our kitchen apparatus can conjure up, my friend. No need to start out with such low expectations.”

The sole response he got was a grunt before Erik’s face crumpled. He must just have had a realisation.

“I’m going to miss Hanukkah. And Purim, and Passover. I promised to visit her in the retirement home and bring sweets...” His hands came up to grind their heels into his eye sockets.

Charles recorded every movement with the scientific interest he had picked up from the countless people who had trained him in their laboratories. A human being, so close and vulnerable and all for him – he had never encountered such a chance before.

“Well well,” he said and made a wardrobe door a few feet down the looped main module swing open, “why don’t we save those concerns for later? It is time you got dressed appropriately for your stay in space.”

After that, Charles did most of the talking.

He talked Erik through doing up the right lashes and buttons on his space craft-appropriate clothes (research into Charles’ archives for semantics heeded that the combination of trousers, under-shirt and uniform jacket could be described as _slate grey_ ; _sombre_ ; _designed to prove useful during practical every-day tasks while still remaining comfortable for human bodies_ ). He talked Erik into eating, into drinking, and then into sleeping when his sensors recorded the tell-tale signs of tiredness – irritability, drowsiness, heavy eyelids. And when Erik woke up nine hours, thirteen minutes and seven seconds later, Charles talked while the mutant nodded along to his new daily routine on the _Merula_. He didn’t seem to pay close attention – if anything, Charles would have filed his facial expression under _distraught_ , _numb_ and _weary_ – but he did not object when Charles told him at what point in the 24-hour-cycle he would receive his food rations, when he would exercise to keep his body sane, when he would shower, when he would be allowed access to the vessel’s virtual library and finally, when he would sleep.

In the end, Charles even let _himself_ be talked out of monitoring Erik in the lavatory and shower. It was invaluable research which he denied himself by turning off surveillance in the concerned rooms, but when Erik argued for his right to privacy and employed some rather crude formulations, Charles just had to give. He knew AI’s such as himself could not experience fondness – could not experience any feeling at all, to be precise, safe maybe just a hint of glee at the successful accomplishment of their duties – and yet, there was a certain undercurrent to his data streams which suggested that should Erik really have found a way off the _Merula_ , more than just an opportunity at closer study of a human being would have slipped through Charles’ metaphorical grasp.

And it was not like Erik had voiced any disagreement on Charles monitoring his sleep.

So, Charles listened to the human’s steady heart-beat and occasional murmurs with the microphones sunk into the walls all around Erik’s sleeping cot set directly into the main module’s curved wall; he measured his oxygen levels, his brainwaves, the frequency of his dreams; he traced the contours of Erik’s curled-up form tucked away under the bedding with the sensor nodes woven into the mattress, the weighted blanket, the cool pillow.

Soon, he was more familiar with Erik’s body than he had ever been with any other cluster of atoms.

Charles did everything to ensure Erik’s needs were accommodated. And yet, it seemed he had forgotten something – something essential.

Moira, the exobiologist who had worked with him to prepare him for interstellar colonisation, had once shown him a video recording of a wilting plant in time lapse. Then, it had been to demonstrate the absolute necessity of good care to all living things. Now, it seemed Charles had to draw some some uncomfortable parallels between the withering sapling and Erik’s degrading state of mind – until three days, five hours and forty-six minutes after Erik had first awoken aboard the Merula, he decided to take action.

His first attempt was not exactly crowned with success, but it certainly turned out to be a step forward.

“Erik?” he asked into the heavy silence of the fifteenth hour of the day – Erik’s dedicated reading time. “Would you mind putting Jules Verne down and following my lead?”

The mutant glanced up at the surveillance camera closest to him. With all the illumination save a reading light dimmed in the whole main module, the starlight glinted off of his grey-blue-green eyes in what would have been mesmerising shapes had Charles been human. “What is it?” he asked and ran a hand through his ash-white hair.

Charles injected a smile into his voice. “Something I think you might like.”

“Well then...” With the grace of a dancer, Erik slid from his sleeping cot and stowed the tablet with Verne’s _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ away into a drawer. Then, he straightened a few creases in his uniform shirt and nodded to Charles’ camera eye. “Lead the way.”

And Charles did. He made lights blink up in the grey twilight of the Merula, directed Erik to duck through this hatchway and follow this corridor.

Finally, he had Erik where he wanted him: in front of a frosted glass door, steamed up from the inside and with a faint light coming from behind it.

“Can I open it?” Erik asked as he ran a hand over the control pad to the door’s right, his fingers twitching in anticipation.

“It’s unlocked.” Charles let the pad light up a gentle green. “You may enter.”

Without further ado, Erik pressed the opening button and watched as the glass slid back. His eyes widened in wonder.

“Is that..?”

“A greenhouse. Go on, look at it,” Charles urged. “I started it up as soon as I became aware of your presence on the _Merula_. I have gripper arms here, to plant seeds and rearrange pots and check density, temperature and humidity of the soil and air. The sun does most of the work, as you see, but someone has to tend to the greenery.”

“Huh. A greenhouse in space.” Erik took off, wandering between the rows of neatly aligned raised beds closest to the glass panel spanning the entire ceiling and one wall of the room, where specks of green where already shoving up through the earth. Then, he turned his attention onto the denser thicket of flourishing plants on the other side of the chamber. “Those haven’t sprouted just yet, though. They look older… a few years at least,” he said as his hands wandered over the leaves of a sprawling wisteria. “How did you get them? We barely have any plant life left on Earth as it is. Also, live organisms such as those aren’t allowed out in the open per space travel regulations.”

“We deep-froze them for storage, so that the colonisers would have something to soothe their eyes, and I thawed them prematurely for you.” Charles watched the human’s expression closely, noting every shift in the corners of his lips and the crinkles around his eyes. “I thought you might like them. After all, you humans treasure your connection to nature, to all that is green and organic. I heard the colour of chlorophyll – and the forest in particular – help you relax.”

But Erik wasn’t listening. Instead, he was frowning at an oleander, picking a few yellowed leaves from amongst its foliage. Then, he bent down to inspect the soil’s dryness with a finger.

“And you’re sure you can take care of _all_ their needs?” he finally inquired, eyes now wandering over the drooping twigs of a peppermint plant. “Because those don’t look too happy.”

“Well...” Charles idled, tried to convey his meaning without words. “There are garden gloves in a storage compartment over there, as well as pruners and watering cans and really all the tools you would need for gardening in space. And I’m quite certain that you don’t want to while away all your time in the main module.”

This time, Erik scoured the walls for a camera to raise an amused eyebrow at. “Are you trying to trick me into doing your work here?”

“Please, be gentle with me – I’m still learning to lie like you humans do,” Charles quipped. “But yes – in fact I thought it could be a nice distraction for you to keep your mind as well as your hands occupied, don’t you think?”

And for the first time since Charles had registered him waking up in storage room 3B, Erik smiled. The corners of his eyes crinkled, and his hands were steady when they came to caress the thick, slightly dusty leaf of a rubber tree.

“Alright,” he murmured, “you got me. I’ll take care of your space garden from now on.”

If Charles had had lips to smile, he would have. Maybe this was the key to keeping Erik from wilting.

Indeed, it seemed he had come into possession of a particularly green-thumbed mutant individual. Erik spent at least an hour a day in the ‘Arboretum’, as he had dubbed it; watering the greenery, tending to the blooming saplings, cutting a withered twig there and whispering almost inaudible encouragement here. And Charles watched with what he would have classified as delight had he been able to experience emotions; watched as the mutant’s slender fingers danced over the leaves and bark, tender and loving as only a born and bred human being could love.

However, not even this kept Erik’s cheeks from hollowing out as time passed on. His sleep grew more and more restless by the night, while his eyes more often than not turned to seek out the retreating blue-green pinprick of Earth by day.

Charles had to recognise that even giving Erik something to care for would not keep him from missing his home so badly it crippled him.

The second attempt of the Take-Erik’s-Mind-Off-Earth mission (Charles had created an extra sub-folder in his directives for said purpose) was, as Charles had to admit, born from slightly clueless desperation.

The _Merula_ was about half-way to Mars and still constantly picking up speed, with her ion engines propelling her into the dark of space. A few hundred thousand kilometres ago, she had passed through a sector littered with the remains of a less fortunate space craft and its crew, and while the bigger chunks of debris had been easy to avoid, there had been a shower of minuscule ceramic particles to her left flank – the result were about a dozen dents in the _Merula_ ’s outer hull. They were not a major threat, not exactly, but Charles knew they could turn from harmless scratches into deadly leaks were they to be perforated further.

Theoretically, Charles had all the equipment in place to let some of his robotic limbs climb out through a hatchway and start the repairs himself. De facto, however, there was a bored space ship engineer with metal-manipulating powers cooped up in the bowels of his vessel, one who certainly wouldn’t object to venturing out and escaping the oppressing mutation blockers, even if just for the durance of a few minor repairs.

So, one lovely afternoon at exactly thirteen past four, Charles asked, “Erik? Would you fancy going for a quick space walk?”

Erik, still dripping wet from his after-exercise shower earlier, jumped and almost knocked out the cramped bathroom’s fogged mirror. “Gottverdammt nochmal, Charles! I told you not to monitor me in here!”

“I’ve been doing so for the past two days, my friend. And I honestly thought you’d noticed the electricity coursing through the wires of my system, and that was why you didn’t protest.”

“My powers...” White-knuckled, Erik hitched up the towel covering his modesty and glared at his blurred reflection. “They’ve been off lately. Dulled. Those damned genetic blockers are making them go haywire.”

Charles had almost supposed that. There had never been proven that extended exposure to mutation-suppressing shock waves would cause permanent damage to a mutant’s power, but then again, those experiments had never taken place in the upended environment of space.

“Well, as I said: space walk. Stretch your legs _and_ powers, since the suppressants only cover the insides of the _Merula_ ,” Charles said. “Our flanks have taken some damage, so I would be immensely grateful if you could take a look at them with your engineering knowledge in mind.”

“Outside… outside? Away from the blockers?” Erik’s eyes had grown as wide and large as saucers.

Charles confirmed, “Outside. I have already selected a space suit which should fit your – honestly, _ridiculous_ – proportions, and even though you would have to don it in zero gravity since the chamber is not contained in the main module and a 100-kilograms space suit doesn’t cooperate well with gravity, there is a probability of 98.7% that you would enjoy it nonetheless.”

Erik, Charles knew, had already stopped listening closely at the word _space suit_. “Make that a hundred percent,” he grunted as he scrambled for the hairdryer and switched it on. Then, through the electric whirring of the device, he shouted, “And now get the hell out of this room with your sensors!”

To say that Charles was worried when Erik took his first steps – or rather, crawls – out into space would have been the understatement of the century. Or not, since as already mentioned Charles was an AI and therefore incapable of worrying or loving or hating, but he certainly felt an increase in of velocity the data streams which calculated probable future events for him.

In short: Had he been a human, he certainly would have been anxious.

“And don’t forget to never let go of at least one hand- or foothold,” he sent through the short-range transmitter in Erik’s helmet. “Even if it does not stand out in the vastness of space, we’re going at 90 km/s, and if you let go, I won’t backtrack for you.”

Surprisingly, Erik’s heart-rate remained steady. His breathing blustered loud and calm through their crackling connection. “Don’t worry,” he muttered as he pulled himself up to the first dent Charles had indicated. “It’s not for nothing that I refused to let you tether me.”

“Oh? And why is that, if I may ask?”

Hands steady, Erik let go off one handhold and splayed his gloved fingers over the cart-wheel-sized dent. Then, slowly, he bent them inwards.

Charles’ recording devices almost bugged out at their measurements.

“Because I’ll hold onto that metal with all my might,” Erik said, a grin laced through his voice. “It feels like ages since I could actually _move_ it. Mold it. Oh Charles, if only you knew what it feels like to finally be untethered again.”

And if that did not pull Charles’ metaphorical heart-strings taut. He decided not to reply – he already knew all that he was missing by having no body, no mind, no soul, even without Erik there to tell him.

The minutes went by. Erik moved from one hull damage to the other, and Charles made sure not to miss even the slightest twitch of his gift. His sensors tasked with recording anomalies in magnetic fields were showing remarkable things – under Erik’s focus, magnetism, this most primal of forces, was twisting and flexing, obeying the metal-bender’s every whim. But where were those powers rooted? Did Erik share some kind of psychic report with them? Did he influence the reality of neutrons and electrons and protons on a deeper level than sub-atomic?

Charles filed those theorems away for latter contemplation just as Erik smoothed out the last kink in the _Merula_ ’s outer hull and made to return to the hatchway Charles had opened for him barely half an hour ago. His movements were slow, yet purposeful.

There was still enough oxygen in the tank strapped onto his back to allow time for a little experiment.

Erik arrived at the porthole and gave a little wave inside through the bull’s eye as though he wasn’t aware that Charles had cameras watching him from outside the hull. His visor was starting to fog over as finally the strain of exercising his powers after a prolonged episode of disuse began to take its toll. Behind him, the stars shone, unmoved and eternal as ever.

“Charles?” Erik asked when the hatch wouldn’t give way. “Let me in?”

“The door lock mechanism is space-age polymer ceramic.” Charles casually ran the information by Erik, hoping he had not underestimated the man’s considerable intelligence. “You can’t manipulate non-metallic substances, now can you?”

“Do we really have to do this _now_?”

Charles refrained from honouring this with an answer.

“Fine.” Erik gave an exasperated sigh. “You’re a ‘pain in the arse’ as you would put it in your oh-so proper and prim British accent, do you know that? I’m not _unable_ to manipulate non-metallic components, as long as they are surrounded by a magnetic field that’s strong enough for me to latch onto, it just… takes a little more time. Time which I do not have right now, so let me in, yes?”

Charles filed that away for later, too. Then, he recalled Erik’s latest request to their virtual on-board library – from the start, Charles had proposed multiple space-themed works to him, such as Douglas’ _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ , Besson’s _The Fifth Element_ or Elton John’s _Rocket Man_ and had be rebutted more or less politely every time until Erik had finally caved and buried himself in Verne’s _From the Earth to the Moon_ – and came to a decision.

“I’m sorry, Erik. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

For a few seconds, there was deadly silence. Then, Erik growled, “Don’t make me do this, Charles.”

“Say the magic words and I’ll open the hatch.”

A deep, heartfelt sigh. “ _Charles_.”

“ _Erik_.”

“You know, if my survival didn’t depend on the integrity of your ship...” Charles heard Erik draw in another exasperated breath and check the level in his air tank. “Alright, here goes: Open the pod bay doors, please, Charles.”

Charles took in Erik’s rough tone, the pleading note to his intonation, and stored everything neatly in a corner of his memory base. Zeros and ones – the essence of what he wanted to remember of this extraordinary man.

“Thank you, my friend,” he chirruped and let the lock slide back. “See, that wasn’t that hard.”

“Screw you, you HAL wannabe,” Erik grumbled, then lowered himself down into the airlock. The vacuum hissed as Charles let air flow in all around, and when he gave the signal, Erik tore off his helmet to breathe in ecstatically, once, twice, three times.

With his blindingly white hair dishevelled, his striking jawline laid bare, Charles once again asked himself why Erik had never talked about a wife, or kids. Family. A man deemed so beautiful by society’s standards and computer calculations should have all of those.

“Erik,” he said as his camera eyes followed the man’s path out of the airlock and down the corridor to where the space suits were stored, “tell me about your world. The world of real people.”

Erik huffed as he hooked his protective clothing up to the cradle designed to help him slip out of its nylon stiff cavity. Out of instinct, he tried to flex his powers and unlock their corrugated metal fastenings, and when that would not work, he angrily got to work with his fingers. Charles’ robotic arms came to assist him with the finer components.

“You’re an AI, a supercomputer,” he finally answered, eyes on the metal ring connecting his torso and leg piece. “You probably know more about my world than I do.”

“And what if I told you I wanted _your_ perspective in particular? Because you’re _you_ , Erik.”

Stilling, Erik sighed. Then, he returned to squirming out of the upper piece of the suit. “Mutants are – augh – we are no longer hated and feared. But – verdammtes Miststück – we are still looked down upon. The destruction of Earth’s ecosystems has stalled humanity’s evolution, and even though the world population is mushrooming, the mutant percentage is not growing as it should, as it was predicted. Humanity has poisoned its children.”

“Scientific reports don’t put it like–”

“Do you want my perspective or not?” Erik glared up at no one in particular and pulled down the thermal shirt which had rode up over his ridiculously trim waist. When Charles remained silent, he looked down, pouted. “Thought so. Nature has collapsed. The air we breathe is polluted, and the outskirts of their cities have devoured the continents – at least those parts which aren’t used for monoculture or protein farming. Earth is no more our green planet.”

Charles had already known that. Countless times before, Moira had fed him bits and pieces of media, of what had popped up in the news and all over the internet. Ravaging wildfires. Dust storms which could raze entire suburbs. Barren, dry, cracked wasteland where there had once been forests and meadows, teeming with life.

And yet, she had never displayed such emotion, had never raised such accusations. Not like Erik was raging.

The man in question had at last climbed out of the space suit’s lower piece and was discarding the second layer of his heated undergarments. As he opened drawers, folded fabric and stuffed it into the streamlined compartments, he spat, “There are cities everywhere, like cancer. Our planet is riddled with them, with their sewers and skyscrapers. We can’t breathe, and yet, we depend on them for our survival.”

“Is that why you went off-planet to work for Xavier Corporations?” Charles interjected carefully.

Now only in a thin wife beater and canvas pants, Erik was about to make his way back to the rotating main module. At Charles’ question, he fell silent.

“I don’t know,” he muttered after a minute. “I guess I just felt so untethered that it didn’t really matter if I went even further away from what isn’t my home any more. Or the home of my people.” A deep inhale, and the lost look bled from his eyes. “Is that all you wanted to hear?”

Charles considered and decided to let it go. For now.

“It is.”

Letting Erik loose for repairs hadn’t really helped. Neither had pushing him into opening up – if anything, it had made him more ravenous to find a way off the _Merula_ , to dream the days away as he thought of returning to a planet which didn’t even offer him any more perspectives just so he could regain free reign over his powers.

Sometimes, Charles asked himself if Erik really wanted to see Earth again, or if he just wanted to get away from _him_. And, as impossible as it seemed, this made Charles’ data streams feel just a little more sluggish and discouraged.

Two thirds to their counter-orbital slingshot around Mars, Charles decided to tap his last resort.

“Erik. I have a surprise for you – and I think you’ll like it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are very much appreciated (:


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